Feeling: crowded
Listening to: The Shins - The Past and Pending
Reading/Watching: ER

I've been getting a sense of awkwardness lately, because as I grow older and my general acquaintance expands by default (because I'm not a leper and I've not relocated and thus had to sever any ties in five years), my circles begin to collide.

Don't ask me why this bothers me. I've always been a Polygirl, and juggling the many facets of my self-imposed split personalities has always been exhausting. But I keep it that way, for some subconscious reason, because it feels safer. If something goes wrong in one corner, I have several others to retreat to. When it gets really bad, and I need to avoid everyone, it is easier if I know they're not all talking amongst themselves about what is potentially wrong with me.

It's not that I lie to any certain circle, or that I exaggerate myself to become more agreeable to one particular sect. I just have... modules. Places where I am expected to behave a certain way, and revealing a different side of myself can be jarring and confusing.

There's the choir/music module, where I can be the nerdy girl who genuinely loves solfege, the girl who hugs people at random, sings high notes unabashedly, and mugs at the basses across the room in the middle of serious John Rutter arrangements. I am the girl who wants to try everything, the girl who is feminine and witty. I am the girl who always. knows. her music. No exceptions. (and when there is an exception, I cry. I am that obsessed.)

There's the Air Force Boys/D&D module, where I am massively geeky and dopey, discussing the works of Weis & Hickman, and contrasting Shadowrunners with Joss Whedon's Firefly. I am the girl who can order Chinese, make a pitcher of iced tea, attempt to be funny (yet fail miserably), and do the dishes, all while she's leveling up her cross-classed Changeling and picking a new feat for level 6. I am Wendy with the Lost Boys, mouthy and motherly and one of the guys while simultaneously being the token female.

There's the Honors group module, where I'm the quiet hemi-demi-semi-shy girl in the back who is always passing notes with Bri and Jules, and speaks up once in a blue moon, but has something worthwhile to say when she does. I'm the girl who shocks people when she says a cussword, or comes out with a comment that is particularly racy. I'm the girl most people didn't get to know very well.

There's the family module, where I am one of 48 cousins, the girl who grew up awkward and ugly and sang on top of picnic tables. The girl who hangs out with cousins years younger than her, instead of with the adults, and is still figuring out how to be more than one of many. I am the girl who was knocked for a loop when suddenly aunts and uncles that couldn't be bothered to attend graduations or performances showed up at the senior recital with gifts and hugs, as if she was the only one like her in the world.

And much bigger, but less social is the poetry/writing module, which includes all you journal people. You know me less, yet know me more, and to you, I am all the secret, scared things that I can't talk about in a crowded room. I am both hiding and wide open, in that you can play Random Entry Roulette and come across secrets that my own best friend doesn't know, but you probably couldn't guess my favorite food or the color of my eyes.

Now I'm older, and slowly people are coming close enough to cross several circles. They are very few, and very special, the people who know me in multiple modules. Bri has actually complained about this before, about how I know so much of her social world, but she usually only sees facets of mine, and now she is reaching into all corners of the room (it's because she lives her life as a circle, eagerly gathering everyone into the middle, while I have mine set up like a flowchart).

Mon coeur is the main threat to my polyworld. He's met my loopy gigantic family, hung out with my Honors group friends, gone to choir concerts, and read my journals for over a year. Each time he crosses over into a new module, I get a curling, cringing feeling in my stomach. If he keeps this up, he will know everything about me. Possibly more than I know about me. And as much as I know that this is the way it's supposed to be, I am still apprehensive. I keep myself sectioned off, so that if one section goes bad, I can close that door and still keep the rest of my life intact, like a floodgate. He threatens to override that with his presence, with his ability to fit so well with everyone I love, so that he is burrowed deep under my skin. I cannot hide from him. I cannot simply close one gate.

That has never happened to me before, not even with the very best of my friends. It is so wonderful. It is so frightening.

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